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T O P I C R E V I E W

Larry McGlynn

I have posted a new article about the Apollo 12 Robbins medals made of silver from the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet that was wrecked off the Cape Canaveral coastline during a hurricane.

rjurek349

What an awesome historic record of these amazing medallions — surely, perhaps one of the most unique set of Robbins medallions to have made the journey on Apollo. But even more so Larry, I really appreciate the excellent job you did of researching and wrapping the history around these pieces. A truly great piece of work. Kudos and thanks for sharing!

4allmankind

Larry, a great blog. Thanks for putting it together and sharing your knowledge with us on the topic.

My overwhelming feeling when reading it was how glad I was that Conrad went out of his way to make some of the Robbins that were to fly on his mission a little "special". With all of the things on his mind at that time, he still had the foresight to acquire some of that silver and make the whole thing happen. Kudos to Conrard.

I own one of the Apollo 12 Robbins made from the standard silver. It is one of my favorite pieces even without the special silver because it flew, but if you ever wanted to swap, give me a call

KasDal21

Quote from the upcoming Heritage auction regarding an Apollo 12 flown silver Robbins medal from the family collection of Alan Bean (Lot #40423). Does anyone know details on this?

There is no serial number, though. Robbins medallion expert Howard Weinberger has noted that several medals from this mission have turned up without numbers. He is certain that they flew and believes that the problem originated in the hand-finishing area at the factory.

YankeeClipper

Alan Bean confirmed to me in 2011 that he still had a couple of unnumbered Apollo 12 Robbins medallions which he believes were flown on the mission. I saw another one on eBay about a year ago from an eBayer in the Cape Canaveral area which I don't think sold. If I recall correctly, the seller said it was originally acquired at an Aurora Auction in 2003. So there are at least three, if not more, of these unnumbered Apollo 12 medallions in existence.

If you look at Lot 40079 in the April 2013 Heritage Auction, an Apollo 11 medallion stolen pre-flight from Mike Collins, you will see it is serial numbered but not dated. This would be logical in case of launch delays changing the flight dates. The actual dates could then be engraved post-flight at the Robbins facility.

I suspect the unnumbered Apollo 12 medallions might have flown as spares in case of post-flight date engraving accidents. It would be logical to have flown unnumbered blank backups ready to substitute for any flown numbered medallion that suffered an engraving mistake.

In the absence of any definitive documentation as to what was done by Robbins, there are other possibilities. The unnumbered medallions might just have been an oversight and were supposed to have been numbered pre-flight. There is also the possibility that the unnumbered medallions were production surplus and never flew.

Alan and Howard both believe, however, that they were flown and they certainly are rare.

riolag

Yup, I was trying to sell it last year and didn't — there were questions on the opinions board over whether it flew as it didn't have a number with one suggestion that although the person believed it was flown to discount it. I did email Captain Bean and he confirmed that all Apollo 12 Robbins flew, even those without numbers.